Much still to be done to change SA’s unequal face

SA is highly urbanised compared with most sub-Saharan countries. Well above 80% of its people live on less than 2% of the land.

But these high densities do not mean that all South Africans experience urban life in the same way. The effects of colonialism and the apartheid state are still writ large in cities with a fragmented and unequal urban system in terms of economic opportunities, social justice and environmental sustainability.

Forced removals, return migration and the fact that Africans were considered transient workers in urban areas, created a fragmented space economy between and within urban areas. For example, township workers may spend R50 a day on transport, with a commuting time of two to three hours. After work, they return to neighbourhoods that are in many cases, undersupplied with street lighting, making the commute even more dangerous.

Most residents of township areas still have lower access to health facilities, social services and other amenities compared to former white areas.

SA’s urban areas can broadly be divided into three categories.

At one end of the spectrum are areas of major economic growth, hope and relative prosperity. These are the major 30 or so urban areas where 80% of the jobs in the secondary, tertiary and quaternary sectors are found and where there are relatively high levels of income. Here, the greatest racial and income segregation is found, with gated enclaves of prosperity surrounded by high walls.

The second category is characterised by urban municipalities, smaller in size, with smaller pockets of formal sector activity. In these places there is some formal sector economic activity, ranging from farming to mining to the leisure and tourism sector. But they usually have large hinterlands of the unemployed where backlogs in providing social services and infrastructure are high. There is a high degree of differentiation in size and economic context within this category.

In the third category are areas with little economically productive activity, but major social welfare needs. Local economies typically revolve on government programmes of health, welfare and education, with migrant remittances still playing a major part. Most of these areas were created through forced removals of blacks from areas deemed to be "white" SA.

The National Development Plan argues that sustainable development is dependent on the local context in which it takes place. Different settlement types need different responses.

The Integrated Urban Development Framework adopted in May 2015, provides guidance in reorganising the urban system and responds to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 11, which enjoins governments to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.

Outdated town planning schemes created dormitory suburbs far from places of employment

The global adoption of the New Urban Agenda in October 2016 has given new impetus to improve urban areas for the benefit of those who live in them and the country as a whole.

It provides useful guidelines for managing urbanisation. In many of these areas, SA is doing relatively well, but in others, there is much work to do. For instance, the free basic services and human settlements programmes are possibly the best models of this type of service.

The New Urban Agenda calls for all citizens to have access to equal opportunities and face no discrimination. While the courts promote the rights of all to the city, discrimination on the basis of race, gender and ethnicity remain battlegrounds.

In promoting measures to support cleaner cities, SA has much more to do to ensure it minimises and recycles waste. To reduce the risk and effects of disasters, the New Urban Agenda calls for strengthened resilience in cities. Climate variability requires active planning. Flooding in many urban areas has shown that the poor bear the brunt of these events.

It is imperative that urban planning ensures that poorer people are not located in areas that are subject to flooding. Work needs to be done to ensure that emergency services are able to respond to disasters in informal areas. SA’s cities have been innovative in mitigating climate change through taking measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. SA has played a key leadership role in global climate change initiatives.

We must reflect on challenges with transforming a built environment designed for racism

The New Urban Agenda calls for respect for the rights of refugees, migrants and internally displaced persons regardless of migration status. White racism has sadly found a new bedfellow in xenophobia. Much remains to be done to build a humane and caring society.

In improving connectivity, many cities have gone a long way in providing safe, reliable and affordable public transport, but there are many challenges. SA’s sprawling suburbs mean not enough people are living in proximity to one another to make public transport viable without government subsidies.

Outdated town planning schemes created dormitory suburbs far from places of employment. This means that in the mornings, buses are full going into town and empty coming out, limiting the viability of our transport. SA’s urban areas must densify and diversify if they are to be sustainable.

The New Urban Agenda calls for the provision of safe, accessible and green public spaces, yet many of SA’s open spaces are not well maintained and are not safe. There are variations in the quality of public open space in poorer areas compared to older, whiter suburbs. SA must guard against privatising public space, through making it inaccessible or expensive.

SA’s social, economic, spatial, financial and environmental challenges require of us a mind-set that gets us all building our urban areas together. The continuing and residual effects of racism must be tackled. In most municipalities, racial segregation, which means income segregation, has hardly changed in 20 years of democracy. As a result of SA’s apartheid past, several large urban municipalities exist with low economic activity and large populations living in fairly dense conditions. A solution has to be found to enhance their capacity.

SA must develop new urban regulations, with improved urban planning and design, but with the provision of developmental finance to ensure plans get implemented.

As World Cities Day is celebrated on Tuesday, we must ask ourselves what we can do to deal with the spatial transformation of SA. We must reflect on challenges associated with transforming a built environment designed for colonialism and racism.

The new deal for our cities and towns must steer urban growth towards a sustainable growth model of compact, connected and co-ordinated cities and towns, where the National Development Plan’s goals of spatial justice, spatial sustainability, spatial resilience, spatial quality and spatial efficiency can be realised.

• Bannister and Sutcliffe are directors of City Insight.